When August began, I found myself asking if there’s a much weaker version of bipolar (there is, it’s called cyclothymia) and whether I have it. As usual, cyclothymia sounded like a suspiciously broad category and I concluded my membership didn’t matter even if the category tracked something real, because there isn’t much to do about cyclothymia other than living a clean and stabilizing life. That sounds awfully hard for little gain. I won’t do it.
My good periods are sometimes kicked off by low sleep (a major bipolar hint), but the relation is hard to tease out because I’m often staying up late in the first place because I started a project. I have plenty of normal times that aren’t high or low. The highs are higher than the lows are low. I wonder if my neurotype is what ‘evolution is trying to hit’ when it ‘sometimes goes too far’ and produces bipolar.
I said to my friends:
I can’t tell if I’m being a tumblrina about this. Is this normal? Do you guys go through stages of intense productivity followed by anhedonic drops where it’s hard to do anything and nothing is exciting and you sleep more? Almost ?definitionally? people must feel like this, right? Since any variance around a steady underlying baseline can be interpreted as a cycle.
Although “whether I have cyclothymia” is an uninteresting question, occasionally the drop is so steep I find myself reading up on it again, trying inefficaciously to understand what is happening.
I spent most of my free time in June using Claude Code to co-create Gallae, and most of my free time in July writing on Gallae. I wrote about 30,000 words across various projects, and Claude Coded a second app for my household to track tasks and baby data.
I’ve invested skill points in basically three things: writing, visual design, and computer programming. In June-July I worked only within the comfort zone of my core competencies, delegated everything else to Claude or my boyfriend, and saw results every day. Even though my life was otherwise stable, this was hyperstimulating to a degree that even social media or porn cannot match.
There wasn’t any external reason I had to stop. Usually there is – when I’m in a writing high, I fall into a depression when I hit a blank spot in the plot I can’t satisfyingly fill. But this time, I’m not even stuck yet. It felt like the meat of my brain gave out after two months. I’m still writing and pushing features but I do so through a thick fog, and my work is worse.
At the beginning of the month I went to a bleak networking event where I couldn’t feel any interest in anyone or anything, even on Ritalin and alcohol. I came home and vowed not to leave my house for the month of August. I felt almost tearfully grateful at the thought of becoming a housework drone. No more social contact. No more ambitious projects. It was time to molder at home for a month.
Two days before I came home and declared it was Mo’ Moldering Mogust, I did coke for the sixth time in four years. The first five times, coke seemed like a slightly nicer and shorter acting version of Ritalin, which I use without any addiction to do housework or focus during social events. But the sixth time, I liked it too much.
Before coke, I was not having fun at the party I was attending – it was much too loud inside, too cold outside, and I didn’t want to talk to anyone. After coke, it was too loud, too cold, and I still didn’t want to talk to anyone. But the universe had a reward landscape again. I could tell the moment coke wore off it would go away. So I wanted to do more.
It was obvious doing more would be absurd. The only thing the drug could buy me was more of this lonely, contentless happiness where I sat silently and still could not bear to talk to anyone. I knew I should go home. I did. But it took an embarrassing handful of minutes to call a ride. I fought myself through those minutes, reasoning myself in and out of the obvious good decision. It was about a third as hard as fighting myself about marijuana had once been.
Coke is bad for your heart. I don’t want to fuck around. At thirty two, I feel pretty old. When I went to bed that night, I thought I’d limit myself to once per quarter. When I woke up feeling slightly funny in the chest, I swung towards “probably never again”.
Having a toddler at home has removed a lot of uncertainty from my life. I feel kind of grateful that the internal debate was so terse. Mild addiction, even if it doesn’t ruin my life, steals it just by pendulating me: I won’t… I will… not this time… yes next time… if I do this now, will my future self do that… around and around until you feel insane.
My daughter has spared me that. This would all be harder if it weren’t a law of my universe that I have to be up and alert at 9am every day.
I’m still writing fiction, for a less complex project, in a tired stupid way where I’m making Claude generate a lot of the prose. (I still write ~1000 words a day myself, but this is the first time I’ve delegated the meat of the scenes, as opposed to technical exposition or painting scenery.)
I wonder whether I should stop. I can feel the embers of obsession weakly heat up when I write. Am I holding on to something that’s keeping my brain from resetting? Or am I keeping mentally active so that I don’t totally lapse into listlessness?
On ChatGPT’s advice, I go to sleep early, wake at a consistent time, and go out on a walk first thing. I’ve been doing this for a week, getting 8.5 hours of sleep every night. But I don’t feel rested when I wake up.
I’ve always felt sedated in the morning and mentally active at night, and shifting an hour earlier means trading the best hour of my day for the worst. I feel healthy but muzzy. Probably the alternative is unhealthy and muzzy?…
Give it back! Give it back to me!
I am not manic. I don’t gamble. I don’t have impulsive unbarriered sex. I don’t spend money. All I do is write romance fiction and spec out computer programs.
I can be trusted with the highs, all the time.
I want to run hot. I want to burn at both ends and give a lovely light.
On and on and on!
And not be off, until I am off for good.